What is the Fitness Hub, and why did we create it?

The EGYM Fitness Hub serves as go-to touchpoint for members right on the training floor for onboarding, measurements, and motivation. It acts as a knowledgeable guide on a member’s fitness journey with access to all relevant performance data. Operators and staff benefit from automatizing tedious manual tasks, like setting up individual machines and gaining time to focus on value-adding personal interaction. How does it work? In the article ‘Meet the EGYM Fitness Hub’ and ‘What Problems Is Fitness Hub Solving?’, we expand on how Fitness Hub addresses some of the most pressing customer and member needs, including a more accessible onboarding experience, facilitated regular assessments, and ongoing member motivation. 

In a nutshell: With Fitness Hub, new member onboarding turns into an accessible and fully contactless experience, enabled by automatic measurement of the member and completed in just seconds using the latest 3D camera technology. Thanks to on-screen guidance, all recurring tests and assessments are completed in no time and now include flexibility and body composition measurements⁠.  With Fitness Hub’s built-in cheating detection, assessments are even available for self-service to members. Fitness Hub provides members access to their progress data at any time and in an easy-to-understand manner thanks to our intuitive metric: The EGYM BioAge.

See our product page to learn more about the EGYM Fitness Hub itself, or continue reading to understand its impact on our entire ecosystem and how it enhances the entire EGYM Experience for your members.

How it expands the EGYM Ecosystem & Experience?

Suppose you’re already familiar with the EGYM Experience or might already have pieces of our ecosystem in your facility. In that case, we have good news for you: Fitness Hub is not just a cool new product – it enhances the capabilities of the EGYM products you already use today.
In the following, we’ll explain in detail how the entire workout experience for you, your members, and your staff transforms when adding the EGYM Fitness Hub to your arsenal:

Smart Strength

Contactless onboarding via Scan for accurate settings

In just 2 minutes, EGYM machines are set up automatically, thanks to the latest in machine vision and machine learning. Using the Fitness Hub analysis, all settings for our Smart Strength (and Smart Flex) machines are created automatically to exactly fit the person scanned. During the scan, the staff can keep a safe social distance to comply with increased safety and hygiene demands. Also, the increased speed of this process enables more options for improved processes: Either a seamless group onboarding session or using the time gained for additional personal interaction and services, such as personalized health and fitness consulting.

Smart onboarding screens explaining correct posture and usage

Three things happen when a new member logs in for the first time on a Smart Strength machine after the contactless onboarding with Fitness Hub: 

1. First, the machine already knows the ideal settings and moves its handles, seat, etc., into the correct position. 
   
   
2. Second, when used for the first time, a tutorial on the machine’s screens shows what to focus on during an exercise and how to use each machine. 
   
   
3. Third, the machine guides members and teaches them how to conduct strength tests. These integrated strength tests recur periodically. That means they calculate the optimal training weight for a member at that exact moment in time. Consequently, the training weight is always optimally set to the current performance level and training goal, ensuring effective workouts at all times.

This way, the tedious operational part of the onboarding process is fully automated and leaves staff much more time for value-adding personal interaction and service.  

Smart Flex & the new Flexibility value of the BioAge

Contactless onboarding via Scan for accurate settings

Like Smart Strength, with just one measurement via Fitness Hub’s 3D camera, all machines are configured with the correct settings and immediately available to all Smart Flex machines. Once a member signs in and a trainer confirms settings, Smart Flex machines automatically assume the right position for the exercise.

Intuitively measure and visualize progress in flexibility

For members, tracking progress in strength is relatively intuitive as the training weight increases. Yet, it may be difficult to interpret whether the current performance is relatively speaking “good” or “bad.” However, other assessments in themselves are already difficult to conduct—this is especially true for flexibility—typically not accessible for a member to measure without a trainer and an appointment. Fitness Hub’s integrated flexibility tests make assessing flexibility progress straightforward. With intuitive on-screen guidance, members can even self-serve. Its built-in cheating detection ensures assessments are conducted correctly and without cutting corners. 

Fitness Hub also helps make workout progress visible at an early stage. It uses our BioAge feature to help interpret a member’s current performance by transforming numerous complex measurements into a single metric members can compare to their actual age. 

The EGYM BioAge includes ‘Strength,’ ‘Cardio,’ ‘Metabolism’—and now, finally also ‘Flexibility’!

Facilitated measuring of the Metabolism Value of the BioAge

BioAge Metabolism

When it comes to tracking progress, we’ve seen some areas like flexibility were difficult to measure before Fitness Hub. But also for other areas, traditional assessment tools such as body composition scales commonly require an additional computer and printer to function plus staff to operate, making assessments a rather cumbersome chore for members.

Fitness Hub makes assessments easy: It connects to leading body composition scales from market leaders such as Seca, Tanita, and Inbody, while providing user-friendly engagement with on-screen guidance. Further, it also helps to put a member’s measurements into perspective by including them into the holistic EGYM BioAge, which encompasses other relevant areas such as Strength, Cardio & Flexibility. The BioAge provides the user with a straightforward metric that’s intuitive to understand in relation to the user’s actual age.

EGYM Trainer App & Branded Member App 

With the introduction of Fitness Hub, we also improved the capabilities of the EGYM Trainer App and Branded Member App. They expand on their capabilities for analysis and interpretation, and many of these improvements can be used by EGYM customers, whether or not they have a Fitness Hub in their facility. The main pillars are:

Integration & Interpretation of the new Flexibility Value of the BioAge

With Fitness Hub, we’ve introduced the Flexibility Value as the fourth category of our BioAge. Both apps integrate the new flexibility value as part of the BioAge for facilities that use the Fitness Hub. They also support the interpretation of the specific sub-values, meaning individual flexibility measurements, of the overall flexibility value, by marking them as either “excellent,” “healthy,” or “too low”. helping members and their trainers to understand better where to place particular attention in the next leg of a user’s fitness and health journey.

Drill-Down into the Details of the Metabolism Value of the BioAge

Body composition scales create various measurement values, which can be overwhelming for users. Also, not all of these values are equally relevant to all users, and
BioAge takes just the fundamental values: BMI, body fat, and waist-to-hip ratio into account. While confusing for many, some intermediate users or trainers might at times be interested in digging a bit deeper into the details of their measurements. That’s why now we offer a broader range of values from the measurements of connected body composition scales in the apps. They can be accessed via a drill-down from the metabolism value of the BioAge. This way, getting a high-level view via the overall BioAge remains neatly organized and uncluttered, whereas seeing the key details via the Metabolism value remains easy. Yet, the nuts and bolts of the measurement details are still there if needed by the expert user. These details, are now available to customers using our apps with a connected body analyzer regardless of whether or not they use a Fitness Hub.

Measurement History for each measurement

Finally, the times of manually tracking the historical development of member data or losing track of a stack of printouts are over: For each of the values in the analysis section of the BioAge feature, historical values can be displayed, making it easier to understand recent changes and medium-term trends.